
Maputo, 7 Sep (AIM) – Mozambique’s former first lady, Graca Machel, the widow of the country’s first president, Samora Machel, has categorically denied that she is supporting Venancio Mondlane, the independent candidate in the presidential election scheduled for 9 October.
A little-known electronic portal called “Mozaline News” claims to have interviewed Graca Machel who supposedly urged Mozambicans to support Mondlane in the coming election.
But Machel has issued a statement describing the “Mozaline” interview as “completely false”. It is, she said, “an invention by people of bad faith with the purpose of manipulating public opinion”.
Machel said that she had never granted any kind of interview to “Mozaline”, and so the text it published was just a piece of “fake news”, and no more than “an electoralist expedient intended to confuse citizens”.
“I am a person of principles”, she added, “and even in the most difficult moment of political life, I have acted as a member of the Frelimo Party, and up to today I am guided by its most noble values”.
Machel has been a member of Frelimo all her adult life, and was once the country’s Minister of Education. In recent years, she has been a critical voice within Frelimo, but the idea that she would suddenly support an opposition presidential candidate lacks all credibility.
This is just the latest in a string of fake stories, muddying the waters ahead of the October elections. One of these was the claim that the National Elections Commission (CNE) had apologized to Venancio Mondlane and to the Democratic Alliance Coalition (CAD) for rejecting the CAD’s lists of candidates for the parliamentary and provincial elections.
But there was no apology, and the CNE statement mentioning the apology does not exist.
(AIM)
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